Dolly Parton has started a program that sends a child a book a month from birth to age five. The children must be living in a community that has registered for the program.

Gotta get that addiction started early.

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Yay for Ms Parton!

It's gotten harder and harder for me to buy Kindle books of late. :/ I fear this means there will be an amazon.se store soon, and that they won't be selling as many English titles. I really despise the idea that I can't find books in the original language because someone, somewhere bought the rights to the Swedish translation, which I have zero interest in reading if I can read the language the book was written in.

Got about 5 pages left of Winter's Bone and then I think I'll continue with Ted Chiang's The Lifecycle of Software Objects.

I've been reading Louise Penny's newest - How the Light Gets in. I enjoyed the books I read before, but the Beautiful Mystery and this one have reeled me in. She's on my when she writes a new one I'll read it list.

Gone Girl into a movie. It's been a while since I read the book, but it would be a tough movie to make unless they did it with narration - Morgan Freeman in Shawshank for instance.

Pat - I LOVED those two books in the Gamache series. I actually read The Beautiful Mystery before any other books in the series. Then I started at the beginning and reread it later while waiting for the last book.

I remember reading Valley of the Dolls when I was 10. Probably not kiddie lit?

Well back then I don't recall "young adult" books as a genre. It was more like when you outgrew say "the adventures of katie john" you read whatever was available, like "valley of the dolls" or mickey spillane or readers digest condensed books (awfully desperate) etc.

I'm reading "black house" by Stephen king and peter straub. 8 pages in I think I can guess who wrote what.

I don't know if they were called Young Adult, but there were books for teenagers and I read some of those. They just weren't nearly as interesting .

I definitely remember reading Reader's Digest Condensed Books . My grandma had a huge collection of them and that's what I read when we visited. If I started on a story that interested me, she always gave me the book, as neither she nor anyone else ever read them.

I'm finishing up The Devil Wears Prada. I bought a few years ago when Borders was going out of business...I bought SO many books during those few weeks. I'm recommitting myself to reading more this year. I've already finished one book so far this month (Dark Witch by Nora Roberts) and I'm nearly done with Devil. After I finish that, I'm going to read this book my sisters recommended called Cane River by Lalita Tademy. It's an Oprah's Book Club book and I usually don't read those kinds of books but I'm trying to expand my interests this year. After Cane River my cousin suggested that I read Divergent. I'm leery about jumping on board with trendy YA books (the movie is coming out soon) but she recommended The Hunger Games to me and I ended up loving it, so for now I'll trust her judgement. The movie looks interesting enough so I'm hoping it will hold my attention...

... my cousin suggested that I read Divergent. I'm leery about jumping on board with trendy YA books (the movie is coming out soon) but she recommended The Hunger Games to me and I ended up loving it, so for now I'll trust her judgement. The movie looks interesting enough so I'm hoping it will hold my attention...

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Don't get your hopes up for Divergent (the book). The first one is not bad, but no where near Hunger Games league. The 2nd and 3rd books in the trilogy are awful.

However there is a half-decent story in there somewhere, and I think the movie(s) might actually be not bad. It will get rid of the clunky writing, and they can gloss over the plot holes and 2-dimensional characters with special effects.

To Tick off another box ("the main character was a real person") in my challenge, I'm reading "Jane and the Man of The Cloth" by Stephanie Barron. It's the second in her series featuring Jane Austen solving mysteries set in the locations of her now-famous novels. It's written in diary format, in the rather florid style of of the times and concerns the Austen family (Mom, Pop, Jane and her sister, Caroline, going to stay for a time in Lyme. On the way, they suffer a carriage accident, Caroline is injured and the family spends the night at the nearby Grange. The Grange's owner is a solitary, mysterious and somewhat sinister gentleman who both fascinates and repels our gentle Jane. I'm not far enough into it to know what the actual mystery is but the gothic touches are amusing and I'll see where it goes.

Kwanatic - if you're a fan of long lingering looks at luscious lips and pecs, you'll enjoy Divergent. Artemis is right, there's a great story there, it's just lost at times. How did you feel about Mockingjay?

Pat - I LOVED those two books in the Gamache series. I actually read The Beautiful Mystery before any other books in the series. Then I started at the beginning and reread it later while waiting for the last book.

I remember reading Valley of the Dolls when I was 10. Probably not kiddie lit?

I'm reading EARTHQUAKE:THE DESTRUCTION OF SAN FRANCISCO (or The San Francisco Earthquake, not sure what the correct title is), and I think it's really gripping. It was published in 1971, so it would be interesting to get an updated version, but still--if you thought the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was bad, the aftermath of the earthquake was . People really were no better in the past; they may have been worse.

My dad was a high school English teacher. We had all the required reading books in the house, so I read them all, usually years before they came up in class. Which worked out well, as it meant the first time I was able to read them for pure enjoyment, and the second time for "literary" reasons.

Kwanatic - if you're a fan of long lingering looks at luscious lips and pecs, you'll enjoy Divergent. Artemis is right, there's a great story there, it's just lost at times. How did you feel about Mockingjay?

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Oh jeez, it's not like Twilight is it? I don't want to be tricked into polluting my brain with another story like that.

I liked Mockingjay until the very end. I just feel like it ended in a rush, like someone was standing over Collins as she typed screaming, "Wrap it up! Wrap it up now!!" I liked the psychological struggle Katniss had to deal with in Mockingjay. She bends nearly to the point of breaking throughout the whole book, but she never fully breaks. I liked that aspect of it. It made it a bit more realistic to me...but yeah, the last 30 or 40 pages were a disappointment. Too many things happened too fast and hardly any of it was explained. I felt like I blinked twice and was at the end without knowing what the hell happened. I'm much more a fan of the first two books...

On reflection, after reading the Flagg book, I've decided I'm not a fan of a big plot twist in it. I won't spill it here, but if anyone else in the thread reads the book, PM me or spoiler text it and I'll reply with my complaints.

Having finished with Jane, I'm on to Ashley Gardner's 5th Capt. Lacey mystery, "A Body in Berkeley Square." She certainly doesn't waste time getting into the murder, at least. The body shows up on the first page. I confess though that Lacey's obsession with Louisa, his former commander's wife and the man arrested for the first-page murder, is becoming tiresome. He has other options, I like the way the secondary characters are fleshing out as the series develops and it's also nice to have a Regency setting with characters who aren't all titled aristocrats.

Finished "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", a book I started last night around 10pm and finished around 2:30am. It's quite short (220 pages or so) and it's structured in a letter-writing format, expanding on the diary-stylization of Bridget Jones and presaging the blog post format (book published in the late 90s). The protagonist is extremely sympathetic and engaging--painfully sincere, quiet, bright and well-meaning. His yearning for companionship touched me.